A. L. Buehrer What I Write and Why

Monday, August 3, 2015

Creating Atmosphere

One
of the greatest absences I sense in modern novels, poems, and short-stories is
atmosphere. When did we lose it? Where did it go? And…why??? I don’t know that I could answer any of these questions. All
I know is it’s gone, and I want it back.

So, what
exactly is this lost element, atmosphere? Atmosphere is the underlying mood or
tone of a piece of art. It’s what flavors and colors a scene, or a moment,
making it more than the sum of its parts. In film, the soundtrack, lighting,
set, and movement of the characters are powerful contributors to atmosphere. In
paintings, the composition, palette, and focus play parts. In music, the
instruments, dynamics, articulation, and tempo make all the difference.

Atmosphere really exists independently of
subject-matter. A good author can take a scene in which the same characters are
present, doing the same things, but make the reader feel any number of ways
about it. The magic is in well-chosen
details.

The atmosphere of a scene is a combination of
physical and emotional elements. Look at the scene through the eyes of your
characters in reference to what their currently going through. If your main
character is walking down a beach, whether they are waiting for a boat that
they are confident will arrive soon, or one that they’ve heard rumors may have
gone down earlier that day.

Supposing it’s the exact same beach, the
exact same time of day, and under the exact same weather conditions in both
scenarios, what makes the difference? The main character’s focus, and the
narrator’s descriptions set the atmosphere in this situation. Here’s the
narrative for the more positive
scenario:

He kicked along the shore, bouncing pebbles
into the springy, flashing wavelets. For a few minutes he watched the minnows
scatter, vaguely aware of the jeering laughter of the gulls as they took off
with each other’s fish bones and trash. When the rumble of a boat faded in, he
looked up, shading his eyes against the blazing sunshine. That wasn’t them, but
that one scudding in off the hazy horizon could be.

And
the more worrisome scene:

A few paces from the docks, he stopped
and scanned through the tethered boats. Gulls screamed through the heavy air as
one by one, all the boats in the bay docked. The sun glared on the agitated
water, but the horizon was dark and the incoming craft seemed to emerge from
behind a dark blue curtain. Another boat droned in. His eyes snapped to it. No.
That still wasn’t them.

Some of the details are the same. Some
differ. The things that stayed in both scenes were described differently. In
the first scene, he idly kicked stones and noticed minnows—in the second, he
got right to the point, searching for the boat. The “springy, flashing
wavelets” of the first scene became “agitated water” in the second. First, the horizon was merely hazy. Second, it
was a mysterious barrio between him and those he waited for.

Try writing some scenes like this. Try
writing the same scene—possibly even one with the same dialogue—and putting it
in a different context. Use the atmosphere to convey the feelings of the scenes
differently.